<grumpy old man rant>Yes I agree there are many times when just having stubs with net names is best, I do that all the time and with huge 200-pin chips there is often little choice. But there are times when that's not appropriate and it seems to be a trend these days to have 5 pages of orphaned components with hardly a wire in sight. I see this all the time with a stub called say AXY_12, I spend 10 minutes looking for it's other end only to find it right on the adjacent chip. I know the router doesn't care (auto routers, don't get me started but it's hard for a human to find these things.

Making variants etc is a kludge, see my earlier comment about Protel. You should be able to just pick up a pin and move it.

A schematic is a document and, with the exception of anything written by a lawyer, the purpose of any document is to make something clear. All the techniques we've talked about should be available to the designer to allow him the flexibility to create a clear schematic.</grumpy old man rant>